[jsdl-wg] Questions about JSDL specification

[Alain Roy]

At 11:25 PM 8/2/2006 -0700, Michel Drescher wrote:
>Hi Alain,
>
>please find my answers inlined below.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I have one or two respones.

>>3) IndividualCPUCount allows me to specify a range in terms of 
>>double: what does this mean? For example, if I specify that I want 
>>3.14 CPUs, it's a legal specification, but I don't know what it 
>>means. Ditto for IndividualPhysicalMemory and 
>>IndividualVirtualMemory and IndividualDiskSpace.
>
>Without checking the spec, I guess this is an artefact how ranges 
>are given in JSDL - to be able to use one Range type for all sorts 
>of resources, we decide to use xsd:double as this includes integers.
>
>So you may want to specify 3.14 for jsdl:IndividualCPUCount, but the 
>consuming system then may
>- throw the JSDL doc back at you nagging about silly values, or
>- accept the document and use 3.0 instead, or
>- do something else, e.g. cause a kernel panic in the underlying OS. ;-)

You're right: it is because of how ranges are specified.

Let me make the small suggestion that if there is a future version of 
JSDL, you consider adding a way to specify this in positive integers, 
so it's harder for people to specify something meaningless.

>>3) I don't undersatnd IndividualNetworkBandwidth: bandwidth to 
>>where? Does this refer just to the local NIC? What if there are multiple NICs?
>>4) I'm confused how IndividualDiskSpace interacts with the 
>>filesystem element. The FileSystem element specifies how much disk 
>>space is needed on a particular file system: the 
>>IndividualDiskSpace says something about disk space, but not about 
>>where the disk space is located. Which disk space is it? What does 
>>it mean if I specify a FileSystem and IndividualDiskSpace?
>>5) I don't understand the difference between IndividualCPUCount and 
>>TotalCPUCount. Can I think of it as the number of CPUs on a single 
>>node, and the total number needed across all nodes? Or does it mean 
>>something different?
>
>Consider the jsdl:Individual* and jsdl:Total* elements together with 
>the jsdl:ResourceCount element.
>They are used to express a tiled topology. I hope someboody else can 
>step in here and give a more detailed description.

I don't think I understand, so if anyone else can step in, that would be great.

Thanks!
-alain